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New user functionality – referenced PDFs via Pubget

The new year is in full swing and we are continuing to add functionality to the articles that we publish. This time we’re adding links, via Pubget, to the PDFs of citing articles (as recorded by Cross Ref).

Pubget is a search engine for life-sciences PDFs. If Pubget have found a PDF which is freely available then you will now be able to access it via our site with just one click. Their database contains 3 million free PDFs, plus tens of millions of subscription only PDFs (naturally we wish that everything was freely available but sadly that is still not the case).

Now, when you look at citations to any article as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. We’ve created a 3 minutescreen shot video (with audio commentary) to explain how this works.

As you would expect, we’re just linking to the free PDFs on Pubget. For those citations without a freely available PDF you have two options. The CrossRef link will take you to the publishers site (as it always did). Or, if you work for any of the 170 institutions in Pubget’s network (for example, MIT, and UCSF), you can use the citation to get to the subscription PDFs right away on Pubget.com. If you want to add your institution to the Pubget network, just tell your library – Pubget is free.

On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said:

“Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.”

Dr Ramy Arnaout, Pubget founder said:

“We’ve been long term fans of PLoS because they share our passion for advancing science and information access. We’re excited to take this first step in working together to make science that much faster for everyone who reads articles as part of their research.”

We hope that this new functionality makes it a little bit easier to reach the information that you need.